We're continuing to reflect on the last ten years of Dao and part of that process has been pulling out highlights for David Hevey who is coordinating the next stage of the heritage bid to build a disability arts archive.

I could never resist Peter Street's poetry (there is rather a lot of it on Dao). I first met Peter at a Survivors' Poetry conference in Coventry in the late nineties. As I recall it was not long before Peter pushed himself to realise an ambition to become a war poet. The story went that he got himself to Bosnia at the height of the conflict in the 90s. By bluffing his way through his connections with the local BBC radio station he hitched a lift with a relief unit…

For Peter it was the most devastating thing he'd ever done in his life. For Poetry he did a massive service, crafting incredibly powerful and totally overwhelming descriptions of what he witnessed.

Trauma

An ex-serviceman
rattles his big tin
under our consciences.
I slit in some change,
confess to him that I've seen action.
“Good man!” he smiles.

Walking home
I feel my stitches, holding those scars
of war, burst. At first the traumas are
tight,
stubborn, like trying to blow a cricket ball
down your nose.

Then everything pouring out; snipers
and that wall splashed crimson,
where bits of bone and brain
clung like wool to a barbed-wire fence
and that camera-man who left me
when those guerrillas pulled out their
daggers.

Guilt spills and restlessness splashes
the pavement.

Peter Street's collection Still Standing contains all the war poetry he wrote about his time in Bosnia.

It seems to me as we enter deeper into the New Grim there is a need to question further what the role of Disability Arts is, currently. In a conversation with Mat Fraser recently we talked about why it is more pressing than ever for him to weave a discussion about the three models of disability openly and creatively into his one man show ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’.

Back in the late 1990s we always knew the Disability Discrimination Act was half-hearted. We persisted in face of barriers being removed, but failed to attract younger artists. In the early 2000’s access within new and upgraded public buildings became enshrined in law, so why should younger artists feel the need to embrace Disability Arts?

And we became more confused about our efforts to push the idea of ‘disability’ as a way of thinking about the world that does a disservice to people who don’t fit the perfect framework of what society expects, largely in order to fit our art to funding criteria. Some felt we were getting somewhere in getting mainstream recognition for work by disabled artists. Others, that we had taken a backward step.

But as Mat said in conversation: “at what point was it that we took our eyes off the ball?” For the first time since the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany we are suddenly living in a time when our lives as disabled people are being judged by the media purely in monetary terms. Politicians like Cornwall’s Collin Brewer are fine with openly declaring that "disabled children cost the council too much money and should be put down."

So, in the light of how society is changing, what is the role of Disability Arts in this decade? Is it to challenge or comply with values of mainstream entertainment to support the status quo? I saw a lot of references to Unlimited 2012 as being about ‘celebration’ rather than ‘politics’. I didn’t agree with it, because what I saw of the festival contained a whole gamut, emotionally, politically and in terms of accessibility. For example Sinéad O'Donnell's 'CAUTION' was extraordinarily challenging.

But why do we so easily forget that all art and all entertainment is political: whether it is Lord Sugar extolling the virtues of a capitalist free market economy on ‘The Apprentice’ or Matthew Bourne creating an adaption of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake with an all-male cast or Mat Fraser getting his kit off in ‘Beauty and the Beast’ to show an audience at the Young Vic how a disabled man with shortened arms and no thumbs washes his bottom.

The context for each of those randomly chosen cultural phenomena has a political stake in affecting societies values and judgments. My choosing of those specific examples is in and of itself a political choice. As someone proud of my working class roots Sugar represents everything I hate about the working class and I’m prone to screaming fits in the unfortunate situation where I happen to be in a room when he is on the telly. Equally, I have known and loved a lot of gay people and will always support Gay rights – so would applaud Bourne for challenging notions of masculinity. Beauty and the Beast – although very adult in content – represented the most grown up piece of Disability Arts I’ve witnessed. Julie Atlas-Muz talking about encouraging her mother into the open about having discriminatory values was extremely moving. It was the first time I’ve seen a positive, compassionate spin on encouraging openness about ignorance. Attacking ignorance dismissively, has historically been a core value within Disability Arts – and although it has its place, it does little to change the attitudes of those subject to criticism, unless they actively want to be challenged.

So what is the place of Disability Arts now? Within its criteria Unlimited says that “We are looking for work that is innovative, varied, excellent, led by disabled artists. Unlimited is about art, not about disability. Some work may reference disability, some may not.”

I’ve seen interpretations of that statement declaring that it means Unlimited is "not for disabled people". I disagree. ‘Disability’ is a role (as much for disabled people as for non-disabled people); it is a journey and where an artist is in relationship to their impairment will define whether or not they are at a point where they are comfortable with referencing ‘disability’. There is no getting away from the fact that Unlimited has a social and political context. It is born out of decades of disabled people striving for a voice in the world – a part of that being the struggle for artistic freedom. Whether or not the work that comes through Unlimited 2014 references disability or not – there will be a judgment of that work from the perspective of a disability arts aesthetic, simply because of its context.

Whether we want to acknowledge it or not Art and politics cannot be separated. As a painter I know how key self-delusion is to the process of making Art. Traditionally, painting has always been about creating a 3 dimensional illusion of reality on a 2-D surface. The question is whether Unlimited 2014 can break out of a narrow idea of what is Art to present something that has meaning for disabled people?